A/HRC/40/51 50. The code of conduct of another key actor, the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry, requires member companies and their suppliers to apply international standards with respect to forced and child labour. C. Sale of children in the context of sports 51. Under article 2 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, the sale of children means any act or transaction whereby a child is transferred by any person or group of persons to another for remuneration or any other consideration. While all the violations listed in the following paragraphs may not necessarily amount in all cases to the sale of children, they nonetheless place children in vulnerable situations and facilitate exploitative practices. 1. Contracts 52. Research undertaken by FIFPro, the representative organization for all professional footballers, and the University of Manchester revealed that up to a quarter of professional footballers under the age of 18 did not have a written contract; 15 there was also the issue of players not having a copy of their contract in their possession. This situation places these children in extremely precarious situations and opens the door to multiple forms of exploitation amounting to their commodification. 53. A key step in the life of any professional sportsperson is the transfer from one club to another. It is in this context that the commodification of children often occurs. In the world of professional football, more than half of under-18 players are promoted from youth academies to the clubs while a quarter enter clubs as free agents. The promotion from youth academies generally places children in the lower wage bracket of clubs. 16 54. An additional source of concern at the time of signing contracts is the involvement of intermediaries. In the world of football, children have the highest level of recourse to intermediaries in the context of transfers, amounting to 17.6 per cent of international transfers.17 The recourse to intermediaries can be an issue when it is taken into account that the existing criteria to become an intermediary under the Regulations on Working with Intermediaries are very basic with the end of the FIFA licensing scheme. 55. As outlined above, FIFA has banned the international transfer of players under 18 years old, with three possible exceptions that have been extensively used. In 2017, for example, the subcommittee of the FIFA Players’ Status Committee reviewed 3,312 international transfers of minors and approved 88 per cent of them. 18 It is in the context of these exceptions that an international transfer certificate is required for children as well as the approval of the subcommittee. Nonetheless, under the FIFA Regulations, the certificate and approval of the subcommittee are not required for children under the age of 10, and member associations only have to ensure that one of the three exceptions is met. 19 This arbitrary age limit places very young children in a vulnerable situation and weakens the intended child protection mechanism. 56. Furthermore, as has been widely publicized, several football clubs have still fallen foul of this regulation, despite its three exceptions. 20 Though FIFA has sanctioned these clubs, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport has confirmed the decisions, the complexity of 15 16 17 18 19 20 8 FIFPro, 2016 FIFPro Global Employment Report (Hoofddrop, Netherlands, 2016). Ibid. FIFA, Intermediaries in International Transfers, 2017 edition, period January 2013−November 2017 (Zurich, 2017). FIFA, Global Transfer Market Report: A Review of All International Football Transfers in 2017. FIFA, circular No. 1468 to the members on amendments to the Regulation on the Status and Transfer of Players and the Rules Governing the Procedures of the Players’ Status Committee and the Dispute Resolution Chamber, 23 January 2015. S. Yilmaz, “Protection of minors: lessons about the FIFA RSTP from the recent Spanish cases at the Court of Arbitration for Sport”, International Sports Law Journal, vol. 18, Nos. 1–2 (October 2018), pp. 15–28.